


A Demon's Family

by KateLaurelian



Category: Gargoyles (Cartoon)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, Past Relationship(s), past trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:01:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21606469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KateLaurelian/pseuds/KateLaurelian
Summary: Everything is working out for gargoyles, all except Demona. Alone once again, she is blessed with a miracle. Now she just needs help taking care of it and who better to help her than Elisa Maza, human detective?
Relationships: Angela & Demona (Gargoyles), Demona & Elisa Maza, Demona & Original Character
Comments: 5
Kudos: 71





	1. Moonlight

**Author's Note:**

> So, for some context, I originally posted this story on FanFiction.Net nearly a decade ago along with two other stories. For some reason, people really seemed to like it so I revived it for Nanowrimo. I now plan on continuing it at a rate of 1 to 2 chapters a month while I also work on writing my novel. Enjoy!

The lower levels of Manhattan are rarely lit by street lamps. Whether through disuse or abuse, they so rarely work that the residents of those areas know to navigate by other means.

And, when possible, the preferred of those other means is by moonlight. Tonight’s half-moon was a bright one and it lit the streets well enough.

And yet, the streets were quite empty tonight. And why were they so empty?

Well, high in the sky, swooping and gliding across the void of the night, were gargoyles.

And not just one or two gargoyles. Not even five or six.

No, there were tens of gargoyles, a dozen twice over, maybe even thrice, and then some.

They were most visible when they cut in front of the moon, dark and varied forms sharply silhouetted against the celestial object.

But though few stars were visible, the ones that were blinked in and out of view with alarming frequency as gargoyles swooped between them and those watching them.

Sometimes, a gargoyle would swoop in front of a lit window, displaying them for all the world to see, highlighting skin that was blue or purple or red, glinting off of horns and brow ridges, snaking across wings and sails and tails.

Those sent people scurrying most.

But crouched atop a low-lying building, wreathed in the stark shadows cast by the moon, there was a lone gargoyle who simply stood there, watching.

Demona had been alone for the better part of a thousand years. But never before had she felt quite as alone as she did right now.

The gargoyles up above were . . . well, there really was no other word for it: dancing. Clumsily, yes, nothing like the dances they would have performed in her youth, but they were dancing.

Celebrating, really, though this type of celebration could also be termed a ceremony.

Gargoyles were not big on names. At all. But some things acquired words that could imply an unspoken name.

This was one of those. In the past, these gargoyles would say they were dancing among the stars and winds. Nowadays, the ceremony was called the Starwind Dance and it was performed to celebrate new eggs.

Or, more accurately, to celebrate impending new eggs. In human terms, they were celebrating the fact that some of the gargoyles were now pregnant.

And one of those carrying gargoyles was Demona’s daughter Angela.

Just the thought of her daughter hurt her heart.

They hadn’t spoken in years now and Demona missed her daughter more than anything.

Well, maybe not quite  _ more _ than anything. Demona missed her other daughter pretty much equally.

But where Demona’s separation from Angela was tinged with guilt and anguish, Demona’s separation from Delilah was tinged with grief and a heartrending sorrow.

Demona was, by and large, responsible for Angela cutting ties with her. It was a painful truth but it was one she had forced herself to accept and internalize.

Demona . . . had failed . . . her daughter. She’d failed Angela. And worse, she’d betrayed her, used her, hurt her.

That was her fault.

But the loss of Delilah was not Demona’s fault. It couldn’t be. Because if both Thailog and Sevarius had lost to the stone virus that had claimed her second daughter, then it wasn’t her fault for not knowing about it because they couldn’t have known about it or know how potent it would be.

So instead of guilt, all Demona could feel when she thought of her second daughter was overwhelming grief at her death and a deep, painful sadness at the remembrance of her short, short life.

The two of them had celebrated Delilah’s first,

last,

and only

birthday

shortly before she became stone forever. Demona had done her absolute best to fulfill every dream Delilah had that night. She’d taken her gliding. She’d disguised them both with the most powerful magic she could muster and had bought them a couple of hours to explore Manhattan unimpeded.

And she’d bought her daughter as much music as she could.

Because Delilah had loved music.

Demona took a deep breath, ignoring the way it rattled as she found back a sob. She would not cry. Immortals do not cry.

Because if immortals started crying, they would never stop.

Demona steeled herself and returned her thoughts to the gargoyles up above.

Obviously, Goliath and Hudson had done their best to pass on some semblance of tradition to the younger gargoyles. They flew in groups of four and swooped and dove just so.

In small clans, like this one would be back in the past, despite being larger now than most existing clans up until last year, gargoyles flew formations up to four gargoyles long and then used patterns and movements to convey extra information.

But bigger clans typically used five gargoyles instead and the biggest Demona had ever seen had used eight.

And though the dance itself was unfamiliar, clumsy and a mismatch of different traditions, borrowed from cultures both far away and long gone, Demona, the oldest gargoyle to ever exist, the only one to have travelled as far as possible, to have seen so much, she still knew how to read the dance.

Six gargoyles. Six new eggs, six new couples, six months until the laying. And an invitation woven throughout the dance to all save the Quarrymen, the Hunters, and Demona.

She watched as the dance repeated. Four gargoyles, two familiar, one a total stranger, and one whose features were more familiar than he himself, flew wingtip to wingtip, in perfect formation. All males, specifically the males whose mates were laying.

Well, four of them at least.

They all swooped down, two pulling up earlier than the other two, to convey the number of eggs. If there had been, say, eight eggs instead of six, the gargoyles would have swooped down, pulled up slightly in unison, and then swooped down into a spiralling dive, as was happening now.

This part of the dance would repeat frequently, for any newcomers.

Then came the warriors’ dance, where a group of clan warriors would demonstrate their power with dangerous displays of aerial prowess.

After the warriors was a display of prosperity, with all the gargoyles taking to the air to swoop and dive in larger circles. The larger the circle, the more confident the gargoyles were in their safety and in the prosperity of their territory.

Finally, the last element of the dance was the invitation, where two gargoyles would take to the air at a time, one portraying the clan leader and the other portraying an outsider, going from general outsiders to specific outsiders.

The two gargoyles would act out first the relationship between the two represented parties and then the clan leader gargoyle would either present an invitation or a threat.

Demona was one of the outsiders this time, not a new role over the course of a thousand years.

And the gargoyle acting her out received a very clear, very hostile threat display from the gargoyle acting as Goliath. Admittedly, that was partly because it was Brooklyn acting as Goliath, but the threat display was not something the actors decided.

It was a clan decision, supported by a leader’s vote.

She would not be allowed to her daughter’s first laying.

Demona remembered her first laying. It didn’t go well. Her body simply refused to bring Angela’s egg into the world.

Without help from an older female, Demona would likely have died then and there, and Angela along with her.

Where were the older females of this clan? There were none.

When the clan had suddenly swollen in size, Demona had done some subtle digging to find out the cause.

As it turned out, the sudden shift started with the death of that rotten Princess Katherine. Without her, the Avalon Clan had splintered, some remaining on Avalon but many departing for the outside world.

Most of those had come to Manhattan to join either Clan Wyvern or the Labyrinth Clan. But there were many who had gone elsewhere.

And a few weeks after the first swell had come a second one as young Ishimura gargoyles had come via Avalon’s magic boats to join the two Manhattan clans.

But the Avalon Clan gargoyles were all youngsters, no older than Angela. And the Ishimura gargoyles were not much different. Older, yes, but none passed their first mating flight. Certainly none passed their first laying.

What if Angela was just like Demona? Who would help her through her first laying? Who could help her?

Certainly not Goliath or Hudson! Males had nothing to do with laying; they weren’t even allowed around the females when they were laying!

Would Demona lose Angela a third time, this time as permanently as Delilah?

Her heart ached at the thought.

But what could she do to help her daughter? Angela wanted nothing to do with Demona. Certainly, she no longer trusted her mother. Best case scenario, she’d just ignore any attempt at imparting advice.

Worst case . . . worst case, she might try the exact opposite of whatever Demona told her. It was a tactic some of the clan’s males had employed over the years, to varying success.

But trying it in this case could be fatal.

Demona’s eyes burned even as her claws sunk deep into the stone beneath her. She pulled her wings closer, mantling them tight around her body, red eyes affixed upon the gliding gargoyles.

She didn’t know what to do.

But she had time.

Not a lot.

But a little time. Six months to laying. Six months to figure out a way to pass on some of her knowledge to Angela.

Somehow.

Somehow.


	2. Café

"Good morning, Ms. Destine," her driver, Geoffrey, greeted calmly, holding the car door open for her.

Dominique affixed him with a steely, though mild, glare before ever so slightly inclining her head.

"Where to this morning, ma'am?"

Dominique paused as she slid into the spacious backseat. "Café Tombstone, Geoffrey. And quickly."

"Yes ma'am." The burly man smoothly closed the door behind her, the car smoothly taking off a moment later.

Geoffrey was her favorite driver. The other two (Mike something or other and Jessie or maybe Jasper?) were competent enough but Geoffrey was far and above the two combined.

He was discreet, professional, and an expert driver. And he'd been with her since the inception of Nightstone.

Even with the money she stole from Macbeth, he was expensive but a driver of his skill and disposition? He should have been far out of reach.

Instead, human cruelty and stupidity had dropped him within her greedy grasp. Well, their loss.

Of course, now that Nightstone was doing so well, he was the most expensive driver in Manhattan, but he was more than worth it.

And if a little bit extra kept him loyal, and quiet about some of the less legal things he'd seen her daytime persona pull off, well, all the better.

Normally, Dominique tried to show some small hint of her appreciation for her most valuable employees, such as Geoffrey, but last night's . . . festivities had left her with a headache the size of Castle Wyvern and a bone-deep ache in her everything.

It was all she could do to keep from growling at him.

Hence Café Tombstone. It was, far and above, the single best café in all of New York, though nowhere near the most known or expensive. The coffee was good, the service was acceptable, the staff was efficient, the atmosphere was tolerable, the pricing was adequate, and they sometimes had these honey cakes that reminded her of the good old days of yore, when she and her clanmates would steal honey cakes from the castle kitchens.

She frequented it only rarely, preferring to spend her days more productively than simply in a café, no matter how above average it was.

Still, on days like these, when she'd been without sleep for far longer than even her body could safely handle and her head was pounding and her temper roiled closer to the surface than was normal, she'd have Geoffrey take her to the café and then she would personally go collect her coffee.

She'd even wait in line, when it was necessary.

Of course, that meant she was normally there in the morning, the early morning, unless it was late in the year. And the barista she saw most often in the morning was Emily.

Emily was . . . confusing.

A thousand years ago, Demona was a born and bred warrior. She was tough and ruthless. Hard as nails. A millenia come and gone had done nothing to soften her edges. Instead, the years had acted as a whetstone, sharpening her far beyond what she could have been naturally.

And in those thousand years, she'd seen many different kinds of people. None she ever particularly liked and few she could even tolerate, but many different kinds.

Demon was accustomed to hard people and soft people and broken people of all shapes and walks of life, from the very young to the very old and everything in between.

But none were like Emily. She was tough in a very different way from Demona, not hard like a sword but hard like a particularly large boulder: impossible to really hurt in any meaningful way, too big and too tough to hurt, and generally left unbothered in a few different senses.

Emily dealt with people the way cliffs dealt with waves and she smiled sweetly all the while.

But she took no bullshit, not from anyone, not her boss and certainly not Dominique Destine.

And yet, for how tough she was, she was also deceptively soft. A gentle smile, an earnest, soft-spoken voice, big dark eyes, a way of standing and moving that threw attention away from her; soft, like many others Demona had seen over the years.

But above all else, the part that Dominique was most confused by was how broken Emily was.

Emily had a heart that had been broken years ago and that had never quite healed. She never told Dominique this, the two of them were not close, but Demona knew what old wounds looked like, especially wounded hearts.

Demona's own heart had never healed, only calcified.

But Emily's heart, broken and rent in two though it was, had been surgically stitched back together by a deft hand, so deft a hand, in fact, that it was only with a literal millenia's worth of experience that Demona could even fathom the breaking, let alone the mending.

Honestly speaking, though she was reluctant to admit this even to just herself, let alone anyone else, it was the mystery, and atmosphere, of Emily that brought her back to Tombstone as frequently as it did.

She dismissed the thought the second it crept across her mind, turning her head to stare out the window.

The city zipped on by at unbelievable speeds. No driver other than Geoffrey could drive so fast so well and so gently the riders nary even noticed the car depart, let alone speed up.

"Here we are, Ms. Destine."

Dominique blinked, eyes automatically refocusing. Indeed, they had arrived. But not all was well.

Café Tombstone was a low stone and brick building with a broad sign with a golden floral frame and curly golden writing. Its main concession to its name, design-wise, was a very subtle graveyard theme: vague skull, tombstone, and skeletal shapes worked into the walls, chairs, limbs, and doors of the place.

In homage to its namesake, its door was shaped like a wrought iron cemetery or crypt gate and it had a single large window of dark, tinted glass.

Today, the single window had more in common with a dark pit than it did with a storefront. The glass had been smashed in from the outside and at least half of the café's interior was covered in dark glass shards.

A large crowd had formed outside the café, mostly onlookers held back by police tape, but also a bevy of police, paramedics, and familiar faces.

There was Emily, someone Dominique recognized as a new coworker of hers, and Emily's night manager, a long, thin, awkward man with a gob and a half on him. But there were also two other familiar faces: the _detective_ and her partner.

"Ma'am, shall I-"

"Park the car."

"Yes, ma'am."

Geoffrey knew to avoid the cops where possible and he knew to especially avoid _those two_. But he also knew not to presume to know Dominique's mind.

And so it was that he pulled over without protest or, indeed, much in the way of surprise. Funnier still, if Dominique had thought to look back at him after leaping unassisted from the car, she would have noticed that her swift spring into action shocked him no more than her command.

But she didn't look back so she didn't see anything. She didn't see the complete lack of surprise at what was a very out of character moment, regardless of how she pretended and presented otherwise. She didn't see the slight, very slight, smile or the mild look of fondness.

Her eyes were fixed on Emily. Emily, standing before a beat cop, wrapped in a shock blanket, a hasty bandage holding bloody gauze over a hidden temple wound.

"Emily," she barked out imperiously, shifting from an elegant scramble to a domineering stride as she approached.

Emily jumped, turning slightly to stare at her. "Ms. Destine! What are you doing here?"

Dominique shot her a look that clearly illustrated just how stupid that question was before slowly answering it, "Obviously, I came for my morning coffee. What happened here?"

"Ma'am," the officer tried to break in, "you can't be here. This is . . . a p- . . . p-police inves-ti-ga- . . . tion?" His voice died a slow death ending in a high, querulous squeak as he quailed before the might of Dominique Destine, CEO, and the death glare infamous enough to provide second-hand trauma to the families of victims.

She dismissed him with a sniff and went back to talking to Emily, who watched the whole thing with an expression of simultaneous disbelief and reluctant awe.

"What happened here? Were you attacked?"

Warriors were very physical people. They fought, they sparred, they wrestled, and, frequently, they hugged. Contact was important to warriors, doubly so to gargoyles.

Even a thousand years hadn't managed to kill that side of Demona. It was so ingrained that her hand rose, unbidden, to softly examine Emily's head wound.

"Ms. Destine," Emily cut in, catching Dominique's hand, "I'm alright. There was a robber. He smashed the window in shortly before dawn and tried to rob the register. A gargoyle chased him off. He never even got the chance to do anything."

Dominique sighed, body relaxing minutely even as she raised an eyebrow, staring pointedly at the gauze.

"One of our customers got showered in glass. I slipped trying to help them. It's just a small cut. The paramedics tended to it the second they arrived. It's a head wound, so it bled a fair bit, but it wasn't anything serious."

Dominique relaxed further. Still, she eyed the gauze. "It's not too tight? No undue pressure to the temples or the wound?"

"It's fine, Ms. Destine. It's just a light cut. I'll be back at work as soon as we reopen."

"Reopen? You're closing?"

Emily inclined her head towards the glass. "Just until we get the glass fixed. The boss is on the phone already so it shouldn't be too long but probably a day or two at least."

"A pity. It won't impact business negatively?"

"Well," the human hesitated, "it probably will, a little. But nothing lasting. And me and the others will get a bit of time off, to recharge and all that. I imagine everything will be back to normal in about a week or so."

"Well, I'm . . . relieved to find everything acceptable here. I imagined worse when I saw the storefront."

Dominique ignored the twitching of Emily's lips as she hid a smile as Dominique's less than subtle redirection.

"It looks worse than it is. I'm just grateful that gargoyle scared them off."

Right. Dominique had forgotten that detail.

"What did the gargoyle look like? I've never seen one in person," she offered when Emily shot her a puzzled look. "No gargoyles in France, at least not as far as I know."

There were, in fact, no gargoyles in France in the modern day, though there used to be quite a few French clans, including the Nostradamus Clan who'd settled in the Notre Dame Cathedral.

But the last French gargoyle had died decades ago, victim of one of the last true Canmore Hunters. She'd avenged his death, for what it was worth. One less Hunter, at least.

"Don't know. We just saw the shadow before the robber ran off. Couldn't really tell you much. Wings, tail. Not much else."

Dominique sighed internally. She forgot sometimes that humans didn't know how to read shadows, didn't know how to tell the difference between different wing and tail types.

Just from a shadow, a gargoyle knew the size, shape, general weight, wing type, tail type, and general ridge type of a fellow gargoyle.

"And the robber ran off just because of a shadow?"

Emily nodded decisively. "I'm not surprised. Other than a few idiots, everyone knows gargoyles are bad news for bad guys. Nighttime crime is way down nowadays." She chuckled wryly. "I almost feel safe walking home at night now and that's thanks pretty much exclusively to gargoyles. But I'm guessing that's part of why the robbery took place so close to dawn. Gargoyles aren't active in the day."

Dominique nodded, opening her mouth to speak when-

"Ms. Destine," a smooth voice interceded. A smooth, familiar voice: the _detective_ 's accursed partner. The man was, if anything, less tolerable than the _detective_. "I must admit, I wasn't expecting to see you here."

"Detective," she 'greeted'. "Bluestone, yes?"

"Yes. Tell me, Ms. Destine, what's a prestigious CEO doing at a place like this at this hour of the day?" Translation: what scheme are you concocting this time?

"At a café? At 7 in the morning? I wonder." Translation: what do you think I'm doing here, you idiot?

Bluestone blinked, ran that through his head, and his jaw fell. Behind her, Emily startled giggling under her breath, shoulders shaking from the effort needed to keep her face straight.

"Right," he drawled, looking disappointed in himself, "but why this café? Surely there are better cafés out there, more suitable for a CEO like yourself."

And now Emily just looked pissed. If Dominique weren't having such fun riling the man up herself, she might be inclined to step aside and let the barista take a swing or ten at the detective.

"Excellence comes in many forms, detective, including less obvious ones. Café Tombstone may not be as obviously excellent as some other cafés but I can assure you, it is among the best in Manhattan, and certainly the best for its price range. Both the products and the service deserve special appreciation."

Dominique could see Emily and her two coworkers smugly preening in the background while the detective looked absolutely gobsmacked.

"Th-that's quite a compliment, coming from someone of your exacting standards," he stammered. Translation: Demona's praising humans?! What?!

Dominique had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing. Meanwhile, Emily lost that particular battle, soft, smothered chortles reaching her ears.

She turned back to the barista, digging one of her business cards out from a pocket. "Here. Contact me if there's any trouble. It would be a shame to see such an excellent café go out of business in such a manner."

Emily smiled secretively, taking the card. "Of course," she said pleasantly, inclining her head. "Could you wait a moment? Nick, I need your pen!" Plucking a small note pad from her vest pocket, she scribbled something down, tore the paper out, and handed it to Dominique.

"What's this?"

"Well, since we can't prepare your coffee this morning, you'll have to go somewhere else." Dominique refrained from mentioning that she'd actually been planning on skipping coffee this morning. If it wasn't Café Tombstone, she didn't want anything else. "This is a friend's café. The coffee's pretty good but it's a little hard to find."

"Thank you." Dominique quickly scanned the paper. Hard to find; now there was an understatement. Even with her excellent map of the city, she couldn't quite pin down where this café was supposed to be located. "Good day and good luck."

"A good day to you too, Ms. Destine! Now, is there anything else I can help you with, detective? Any other obvious questions need answering?"

Dominique was still chuckling when she handed the paper to Geoffrey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING!
> 
> Next chapter touches on some triggering stuff, namely child abuse and child neglect. There will be some mild descriptions, nothing overt, but it is a part of the story. You have been warned.
> 
> Also, Chapter Three will be coming in a week or so. On AO3 as of today!


	3. Baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I'm back! Sorry for being late. I meant to have this up over a week ago but I got super sick. Still, I'm better now and here's the third chapter.
> 
> Also, WARNINGS! Like, a lot of them. There is implied and referenced child abuse, descriptions of violence done to children, child abandonment, and so on. None of it is really explicit but it is talked about and described so you have been warned.

The café Emily directed her to was called Stardust Café & Bar. Its main door was hidden in an alleyway in one of the Labyrinth’s above-ground sections. It was hard to get to, which seemed counter-intuitive.

But there were more outcasts in Manhattan than simply gargoyles. There were plenty of people made unwelcome in cafés that a hidden café open to anyone could make a ton of money just by allowing them through the doors.

The bigger problem with the café’s location was actually just how hidden it was. Maybe actual Labyrinth inhabitants would have been able to find it but Dominique had been searching for near five minutes now and she couldn’t find the door.

Geoffrey had dropped her off at the alley entrance and then he’d tried to come with her.

Dominique had sent him back to the car with a simple glance. Even human, she was a better fighter than the man, burly though he was. She did allow him to press a can of mace into her hand, if only for his own peace of mind.

Besides, a warrior refused no advantages. Now, that didn’t mean she wasn’t honorable. But she was a warrior, not a knight. She had a warrior’s honour, not a knight’s honour.

And warrior’s honour was a thing, damnit, Macbeth!

Dominique’s body turned to the side to growl at someone, blinking when she realized there was no one there.

She sighed.

It had been centuries since she and Macbeth had been . . . friends. Actual friends. The kind that growled and joked and fought.

He used to tease her about her ‘warrior’s honour’, insisting there was no such thing.

Sometimes, she still found herself turning to argue that point with him.

Except he wasn’t there anymore.

And yes, he’d been the one to betray her! Just like the captain of the guard at Castle Wyvern!

. . .

But she still missed him. And she missed the captain of the guard too. She missed Goliath and Brooklyn, Broadway and Lexington. Oh, Bronx. She remembered when the garbeast had been tiny, blue all over with massive, floppy paws.

She remembered tiny little Brooklyn, brightest red, struggling with his beak and horns even at an early age. Broadway was called ‘glutton’ for years, until a raider got between him and a human he was protecting. Soft though Broadway might be, he could be fearsome when the situation called for it.

Lexington. The smallest of the clan even back then and one of only a few webwings. Webwings always had it tough. They thrived in places with high cliffs or lots of water. Or both. Castle Wyvern wasn’t tall enough to make life easy for Lex and the only other webwings were all his age or younger, meaning he had no teacher to polish his gliding, to make it easier for him.

This modern world seemed to suit him better. The buildings were massive, certainly tall enough to make life good for a webwing. But she’d heard stories of Lex experimenting with technology, something he never would have gotten the chance to do otherwise.

Good for him. Someone ought to benefit from this human world.

Dominique shook herself. She drew a deep breath and drew herself tall, shoulders back, chin high, eyes dark and flat. She pushed her memories down, buried them, chained them down.

She couldn’t lose herself like this.

The past was dead. She’d kill it before she’d lose herself to it.

Macbeth, the clan, they were enemies now. They would always be enemies.

Angela . . .

Angela . . . was lost to her.

Forever.

But forever was all she had left. She had forever to do whatever she wanted.

And right now, she wanted a coffee.

So why couldn’t she find that dratted café?!

She snarled, low and loud, wishing for fangs to bare.

And then she paused, head shooting up. She turned this way and that, ears pricked for a faint, faint sound.

There!

It was . . . small. Quiet. The faintest of whimpers.

But she could hear it. Barely, but still.

She slowly padded forward, keeping her ears primed.

And not a moment later, she found herself staring at the most horrendous sight since the Black Plague and the Holocaust.

A babe. A human babe, crawling age. Wisps of hair pressed against a tiny head, matted and oily, crusty with long-dry blood.

A diaper so full it was a miracle Dominique hadn’t noticed the stench first.

A filthy kitchen rag clinging to the filth, covering the infant’s legs but nothing else.

Flesh mottled with bruises and cuts, some fresh, some almost gone, and many in-between. A back covered in lashes and hand-shaped prints set deep within the skin of the child’s arms.

Well, arm. One was . . . functional. But the other. Oh, it was horrible to look at. Swollen twice, near thrice the other’s size, and sitting at an odd angle, limp, twisted.

Obviously broken.

Dominique fished her pocket knife from a hidden inside pocket, kneeled down, and cut the diaper free. The filthy flesh underneath was raw and red, painful and inflamed.

She shrugged off her jacket and lay it over the child, prompting a pained whine. “Don’t you worry none, little one,” she crooned gently. “You’re safe with me.”

She carefully lifted the child, mindful of the arm and the head especially, shifting the child until it was cradled against her chest.

The child’s front provided new nightmare fuel. The flesh of the child’s legs, stomach, and functional arm had been near shredded. Peering close, she could see glass in the wounds.

Looking back at the ground, she could see, now that she wasn’t so focused on the child, a bloody path leading from a filthy trash can lid to end at her feet.

It wasn’t a long path but this child . . . this infant had started atop a trash can lid, fallen down, and then crawled on broken glass over six feet.

Or at least, that’s what the evidence at hand was telling her.

“You’re a stubborn little one, aren’t you?” she cooed, gently rocking back and forth. “Stubborn little future monster.”

Even at the height of her vendetta against humanity, Demona had always avoided going after children. She’d raised her claws against a human child but once over the course of a thousand years and that was due to extenuating circumstances.

But just because she wouldn’t harm a human child didn’t mean she liked them. Or was blind to what they would become. She’d spared human children just to see them become killers a decade down the line.

Gargoyle killers, often enough.

She’d spared the children of Hunters, for them to become Hunters in turn. Of farmers who’d crushed her eggs, whose children would one day grow up to shatter her stone form. How many of the children had she spared only for them to meet their ends upon her claws as adults?

Too many.

But though this child would likely become just another monster of a human in time, she could never bring herself to kill it.

Maybe some part of her still hoped her mercy would pay off someday, that someday a child she’d spared who spare a gargoyle child in turn.

Of course, that never happened.

“Stubborn little beast,” she crooned again. “What am I going to do with you?”

She stared down at the child and the child stared right back up at her. She felt a shrivelled part deep inside her soften and melt slightly.

Demona had never told anyone this but Angela was not her only egg, nor her only daughter. She’d had Delilah, of course, but there had been eight eggs between Angela and Delilah, not that Delilah had hatched from an egg.

Eight eggs. None made it to hatching, though one came close.

But she could still remember lying curled around her eggs, watching them, cradling them once they’d hardened sufficiently, imagining holding her child one day, years down the line.

Of course, she never got that chance.

Would it have been similar to this?

The baby cooed in her arms, snapping Dominique back to the present. She sighed and turned, striding purposefully back to the car. She could dro-

So-

Something was - touching her.

Touching her face.

Soft. Small. Gentle.

A teeny

tiny

hand.

It was so small.

She looked down.

There, cradled in her arms, wrapped in her jacket, hurt and abandoned and filthy, giving her a big, toothless grin, was a tiny little miracle, gently stroking her cheek a clumsy, bloody fist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TLDR: Demona finds a baby that needs help and helps.
> 
> Next chapter is coming in January and the one after that should come out during that same month.


End file.
